


This loneliness won't go away

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Sad puppy Leo Fitz hopes that it's all a poorly executed prank, Which I do too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 21:36:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4153863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>If denial and isolation is only the <em>first</em> stage of grief, Fitz wonders if he'll ever make it to anger. </p>
<p>Post 2x22.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This loneliness won't go away

Was it supposed to feel like this? So… calm. Quiet. The only thing he could hear was the rushing noise in his ears; it reminded him of swimming in the ocean with the waves hitting his face. Not big waves, just small ones that made it more fun to be there. He hadn’t been swimming in a while.

Coulson was speaking; he was addressing all of them, but Fitz saw the director’s eye look over at him a lot more than anyone else.

He wondered what Coulson was saying. It was probably important. He should pay more attention, because surely it was just a ridiculous misunderstanding and right at this very moment Coulson was explaining it to them all and that it was just a practical joke and he should obviously be alert and listen to it so he could get some peace of mind. Yeah. That made sense. They were all just yanking his chain. Jemma’s idea, _of course_. She just wanted to make him laugh; frighten him a little before their date. A pre-dinner scare wasn’t exactly Jemma’s normal style, but she _had_ changed lately. This would perhaps be the change he liked the least; hopefully she would stop doing dumb pranks like this one once she saw how he had worried. She wouldn’t be that mean several times. She might have changed, but she was still _Jemma._

They were all looking at him. Why were they looking at him? Why was no one smiling? Jokes are funny, even though this one hadn’t been that genuinely hilarious. This was no shaving cream in the face while the victim was sleeping peacefully, no sir it was not. He looked around a little, it seemed like they were expecting him to speak, but he had nothing to say. Sure, he was a little angry with Jemma for disappearing, but honestly, she probably had a great reason for this ill-timed escapade. She always did.

Well… almost always.

“Fitz?” Skye asked softly, her eyes were glassy and it confused him even further.

“What?”

“Have you… have you seen the footage?” The question was so tender, her voice thick with emotions that weren’t happiness.

Admittedly he didn’t know what footage she was talking about. The only thing he’d understood in the last ten minutes was _Simmons is gone_ and after that he’d tuned out. Maybe he was in shock. “No?”

Skye turned away from him then, her hand reached up to cover her mouth as if to keep in unwanted noises. His eyebrows narrowed and he didn’t like the look of the rest of the group when he looked around for other reactions. No one was looking at him, not even Mack. It felt odd; maybe he should say something more. He reached for the back of his neck and ran his nails over the skin there, even though he couldn’t remember if that patch of flesh had ever needed a scratch, “I haven’t… I don’t quite understand what’s going on.”

_Oh, Fitz._ He heard her voice in his head, though the exasperation was as present as ever, it made him want to smile. Anytime she said his name really, he wanted to smile. He didn’t smile though; he didn’t think it would be appreciated around the current crowd, seeing as they all looked like someone had died.

“Fitz, haven’t you been listening?”

“No?” He echoed his earlier statement.

Coulson sighed, and then he twitched his head in a nod to tell him to come over. Fitz didn’t move though, he was sure he could understand the situation perfectly from where he was standing. But, as always, Coulson was insistent, even throwing in something sounding vaguely like a threat, which was what made Fitz’s feet go forward. There was a tablet in his boss’s hand, and on it there was a still picture that reminded him of security footage when he glanced over the date and time. The date was today, the time was just an hour earlier. There was a play button the bottom left corner, and when Coulson pressed his thumb to it, the video started, and Fitz noticed what was actually in the picture. It was him. And Jemma. He blushed when he realized that this was video footage of his pathetic attempt at asked Jemma out; he was glad that there was no audio. Because it was humiliating, but also because he remembered that moment better than he remembered the first time he succeeded in making his mum’s toaster work better when he was six, and that had been a very defining moment for him. He didn't need audio.

The video went through him leaning on the container of the kree stone; he noticed how he unlatched something while trying to be a suave as possible and that was when his throat started closing up. In the footage, he walked away awkwardly, and so he focused all his attention on Jemma, who was smiling. She was _smiling_. He wanted to do the same, but the next second was the second his lungs decided that they weren’t as necessary for his breathing as he would have thought in the beginning – the next second was the second when Jemma’s small body was sucked into a black wave and she disappeared into the stone.

Then it was quiet. And not the kind of quiet described for the absence of sound, it was just… _Nothing._ He looked up at Coulson, who was putting the tablet away, with some trouble locking it. Fitz couldn’t really understand what he’d just seen. He wasn’t convinced that Jemma’s disappearance was a joke anymore. Maybe it was the furthest thing from a joke ever. It surely looked like the unfunniest thing he’d ever laid eyes on.

But he did feel the need to express himself, maybe the team had answers he’d missed while he’d been thinking about better things, “W-what?”

There were sighs across the room, but Coulson wasn’t one of the people expressing exasperation. He looked Fitz right in the eye, “Simmons is gone. She was taken.”

Something caught in Fitz’s throat and it tickled when he spoke, “We need to,” he had to cough when his voice was nothing but a squeak, “We need to get her _back_.” It felt so unreal. He wondered if he could ask Skye to pinch him.

“Yes, we do.” Coulson started, turning to address the group as a whole again, “But as of right now, we have no idea what that stone really is, what it can do or how we should even begin to--”

Fitz couldn’t listen to more of it. Abruptly he turned around and hurried towards his bunk, leaving the others to look over his back wearily; knowing he was of no help and probably wouldn’t be of much help until Jemma was back. That seemed reasonable to him, surely they wouldn’t ask anything of him until she was there with them again. That was a ridiculous.

* * *

 

Soon enough he was sitting on his bed, breathing so heavily that he wondered if it was possible to breathe yourself to death. His heart was drumming against his rib cage like it was trying to escape his body, and he couldn’t really make out anything in his room as his vision was blurry.

He remembered during their Academy years, before a particularly demanding final, right before graduation. He had been so nervous, and when he had seen her in the doorway of her dorm in the middle of the night after having knocked way too loudly, he had kind of… broken down. And it was unsettling, because never had he been nervous before an exam before. He’d never been worried he wouldn’t make it one way or another - and he hadn’t that time either. Not really. But there was a buildup of stress that had crashed to the ground the second Jemma’s concerned eyes had looked him over.

Of course she’d pulled him inside, closed the door and ushered him to sit down on her neatly made bed (clear proof that she herself hadn’t slept much) and she had given him one instruction – to put his head between his knees and breathe deeply. Which he did, because Simmons had never steered him wrong.

Fitz was so sure he heard Jemma’s voice repeating the words she’d said so many years ago. It was a faint, whispered memory but he could distinctly hear her soft voice tell him to _calm down, it’s okay, it’s going to be alright, just breathe, Leo. Breathe,_ and so he did. He pressed his head down, his fingers intertwined over the back of his head as leverage to keep it down.

Only this time, during this moment of overwhelming panic, he couldn’t feel her hand rub his back soothingly. He couldn’t hear her voice whisper calming words to him a few centimeters from his ear, reassuring words that were ultimately what brought him back. She wouldn’t be there to tuck him into her bed when he was too exhausted to walk back to his own dorm – she wouldn’t be there in the morning with a sandwich and the smile that had always been his undoing.  

And his position stopped helping at all when he started to wonder if he’d ever have those privileges again. If he’d ever get to smile back at her when she was excited, or if he’d ever get to hold her again, or if he’d ever get to bicker with her, or have a scientific breakthrough, or pull pranks with and on her - or if he’d ever have dinner with her again. His throat closed up and tears started to overflow and squeeze through his tightly shut eyelids. He had wasted so much time being angry with her, being selfish instead of listening to her, talking to her, and now that they were finally back to normal – closer to something he had only dreamed of before – she was ripped from him and he wondered if this was what cardiac arrest felt like.

This hurt more than the chitauri virus. More than the pod, and more than trying to move on afterwards. This time, Fitz had no idea how to fix it. He had no idea where he could start digging, where he could begin his research. For the first time in so, so long, he didn’t have a starting point. Because always when the problems were big and frightening, she’d been there beside him, helping. Now if he failed to solve the puzzle, she would never stand beside him again, and that was worse than every bad thing he’d ever felt before.

Because he’d lived without her, he knew how it felt. But she’d come back, they’d taken each other back and that was all that mattered. If she was gone now, it was _forever_ , and he couldn’t accept that.

_If he just hadn’t unlatched the case._

**Author's Note:**

> I don't like writing angst, especially since the science idiots could be happy in any universe I create, but I had this sitting on my chest for a while. I hope it's alright, I couldn't see quality through the awfulness that is writing a sad Fitz.


End file.
